Maimonides on Creation and Science

In the Middle Ages the reception of Greek science produced a challenge to orthodox belief about creation in Islam, Judiasm, and Christianity. Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), the Jewish theologian and philosopher, builds on the Islamic tradition, especially as it concerns the question of creation. In his monumental “Guide to the Perplexed”, Maimonides was concerned to reject the claims of those Muslim theologians who thought that reason and science could demonstrate that God alone is the cause of all that happens in the world. He sought to defend Aristotelian science and the causality exercised by creatures without denying divine omnipotence.